Today is Equal Pay Day, yet the gender pay gap continues to average at 32%; for Black and Indigenous women, the gap is 42%. Arab women are the lowest-paid women in Ontario’s labour market, with a shocking 47% wage gap—that’s 53 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Ontario’s public child care, education, social and community service providers are mostly women, mainly racialized women. They’re overworked, they’re underpaid, and they’re undervalued.

Since 2018, this government has cut spending to community and social services by 12.1%. Since 2022, Ontario has spent the least amount on social and community services than any province in our nation.

My question is to the Premier. Is this Conservative government okay with shortchanging women?

Instead, the Conservatives are preoccupied with funding cuts and privatization schemes, which we know will only further the gender wage gap.

While this government’s Bill 149 requires some employers to publicly post pay ranges, it did nothing to ensure these ranges are actually realistic and aren’t simply perpetuating the gender pay gap.

The government continues to block the Pay Transparency Act, 2018.

Back to the Premier: Today is Equal Pay Day. Will the Premier finally implement the Pay Transparency Act, 2018, to help narrow the gender wage gap and increase women’s economic liberation?

Interjections.

We are on the side of women—women being in the driver’s seat of their economic future, women who can have the choice to be in the C-suite or to work the front line. I am so proud of what we’re doing to ensure that we are fighting to see that women have any area that they want to get into.

I have been able to go down 10,000 feet in a mine, and guess who I found down there? I found women working down there. In a sector that has traditionally been male-dominated, we are seeing more women taking on the brave step to say, “I can be down in those mines. I can be working in Women in Wood,” which is another group that I have been able to meet with.

Do you know what else, Mr. Speaker? We’re ensuring that women have the opportunity to be in the leadership positions. We want to ensure that men will support women and give them the opportunity to take on these leadership positions.

We know that we’re going to see more women in these leadership positions that the—

I think the support and the fellowship that we have with women in every single sector, especially our front-line workers, is paramount.

I want to talk about the number of women on boards. I think our government has done some major things to ensure that we are seeing equal representation on boards. We want to keep encouraging this trend. More women are sitting on boards than ever before—and when you have more women at the head, you have a 75% increase of the rest of the company having gender equity.

These are the things that we’re doing. And we’re working in these sectors to ensure that we are putting women in these leadership positions everywhere in the province.

That’s why a quote from the chamber of commerce release said, “The good news is that women’s wages have grown faster than men’s in recent decades....” That’s because of the work we’re doing in our government to make sure that we’re building Ontario’s economy.

If we understand the economics, a poor economy means women suffer. And if we actually look at what’s happening today—we saw the federal Liberals, supported by the Liberals in this House, increase the carbon tax. Do you know who that impacts? That impacts women.

Right now, we have so many women who have to choose whether or not they’re going to put their child in swimming lessons or pay their hydro bill.

Mr. Speaker, we know a poor economy is what really impacts women. We saw, when jobs were being chased away, women had to become the sole income earners for homes. That’s terrible.

That’s why we’ve made the steps. Our Minister of Economic Development has attracted billions of dollars of new industry investments in Ontario, and women are going to be the beneficiaries of that.

Supporting women and supporting our economy means making sure that women are kept safe.

We’re going to continue to move forward and do what we’re doing to build Ontario’s economy, and women are at the forefront of that.

Again to the Premier: When male students and female students go to post-secondary education in Ontario, they pay the same tuition. But when they graduate and go into the labour market, the value of the credential for women is suddenly worth less. Graduate surveys two years after graduation show that female grads in Ontario earn less than male grads across all levels of education and all fields of study; after five years, the gap is even wider.

Why has this government done so little to close the gender pay gap for post-secondary graduates?

More women are working today as a consequence of our government’s commitment to reduce child care fees, after they exploded by 500% under the former Liberals—$50 a day; today, under our Progressive Conservative government, it’s at $23, on the way down to $10 a day. That is an achievement that makes a difference to supporting women and mothers and supporting more of them in the economy. And we’re going to keep doing this. We’re going to keep reducing fees, even if New Democrats oppose our historic reduction. We’re going to keep increasing spaces, even if Liberals oppose our budgets, which commit to 86,000 more spaces for the people of Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, we’re going to keep increasing wages—a 19% increase in year one; $1 per hour per year, every year thereafter. That’s a commitment to support our workers, our families, our economy.

Let’s do this. Let’s keep cutting fees for the people of this province.

We cut fees, saving families $10,000 to $12,000 in Windsor, and the member opposite from the New Democrats had the gall to vote against a 50% reduction. This is a member who opposed a 19% increase in ECEs; this is a member who opposed 86,000 spaces, with thousands of net new spaces for Windsor-Essex families—taking one position in the House and another position in Windsor.

Why doesn’t she stand up in her place and stand with affordable, accessible child care for the people of Ontario?